The Head of Kay'sWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
The Head of Kay's
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Schools -- Fiction
Other rioters joined in from the right. The noise spread through the
gallery as a fire spreads through gorse. Soon three hundred pairs of
well-shod feet were rising and falling. Somebody began to whistle.
Everybody whistled. Mr Kay was on his feet, gesticulating wildly. His
words were lost in the uproar.
For five minutes the din prevailed. Then, with a final crash, Fenn
finished. He got up from the music-stool, bowed, and walked back to
his place by the senior door. The musical efforts of the gallery
changed to a storm of cheering and clapping.
The choir rose to begin the next piece.
Still the noise continued.
People began to leave the Hall--in ones and twos first, then in a
steady stream which blocked the doorways. It was plain to the dullest
intelligence that if there was going to be any more concert, it would
have to be performed in dumb show. Mr Kay flung down his baton.
The visitors had left by now, and the gallery was beginning to follow
their example, howling as it went.
"Well," said Jimmy Silver cheerfully, as he went with Kennedy down the
steps, "I _think_ we may call that a record. By my halidom,
there'll be a row about this later on."
V
CAMP
With the best intentions in the world, however, a headmaster cannot
make a row about a thing unless he is given a reasonable amount of
time to make it in. The concert being on the last evening of term,
there was only a single morning before the summer holidays, and that
morning was occupied with the prize-giving. The school assembled at
ten o'clock with a shadowy hope that this prize-day would be more
exciting than the general run of prize-days, but they were
disappointed. The function passed off without sensation. The
headmaster did not denounce the school in an impassioned speech from
the dais. He did not refer to the events of the previous evening. At
the same time, his demeanour was far from jovial. It lacked that
rollicking bonhomie which we like to see in headmasters on prize-day.
It was evident to the most casual observer that the affair was not
closed. The school would have to pay the bill sooner or later. But
eight weeks would elapse before the day of reckoning, which was a
comforting thought.
The last prize was handed over to its rightful owner. The last and
dullest vote of thanks had been proposed by the last and dullest
member of the board of governors. The Bishop of Rumtifoo (who had been
selected this year to distribute the prizes) had worked off his
seventy minutes' speech (inaudible, of course, as usual), and was
feeling much easier. The term had been formally declared at an end,
and those members of the school corps who were going to camp were
beginning to assemble in front of the buildings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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